Impact Stories

Nikhil Patel: "As my first college-level research experiences, the projects I've worked on with CSDS have been incredibly impactful and educational for me. Here, I have developed my skills in coding, data manipulation/analysis, spatial reasoning, and communication, and I have gained a strong interest in the intersection of spatial data science and education."

Robert Manduca: "Coming to the University of Chicago as a visiting PhD student, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to find an intellectual community. But CSDS has been a fantastic home base, introducing me to spatial thinkers from all disciplines and all over the world and pushing me to be more sophisticated in how I incorporate space into my PhD research." After graduating from Harvard, Robert is now faculty in the sociology department at the University of Michigan.

Renan Serenini: "I visited the CSDS for the entire academic year of 2022/2023, during my 3rd year of PhD and it was a game-changing experience in my PhD career. Julia and Luc provided all the possible resources and a perfect environment to develop my research. I could present my work and get incredible methodological and practical feedbacks and also interact daily with other amazing researchers. Our weekly study group and reading group provided me incredible knowledge to use in my research. On top of that, and maybe the most important part, we had an amazing time out of the office as well, with several gatherings, barbecues and fun! I'll miss this time and all the people a lot."

After completing her MAPSS degree, Irene Farah joined CSDS, learned spatial databases and is now computing access scores for all businesses in the US for the past 10 years as part of research on the life and death of small-scale retail in American cities. In 2023, she was completing her PhD in urban planning at UC Berkeley.

Frantisek Masek: "I am sincerely grateful for the six months I spent as a visiting PhD student at CSDS. I had the unique opportunity to interact and collaborate with exceptional researchers on a regular basis. Luc, Julia, Pedro and many others have been extremely helpful in deepening my knowledge and coming up with new research ideas during study and reading groups. In addition, they are extremely kind people who tried to help me as much as they could during my stay. Not surprisingly, they gather many other amazing researchers and wonderful people around them, so I was happy to spend a lot of time with the other visitors as well. To sum up, I can hardly imagine a better visiting experience than the one I had at CSDS!" 

Erin Ochoa: "After taking Luc Anselin’s Intro to Spatial Data Science course, I spent a summer as an intern at CSDS, working with Marynia Kolak and Julia Koschinsky.  Then Luc took me on as a TA and advised my master’s thesis.  With advice and support from Luc and Julia, I was admitted for PhD study in sociology or criminology at ten schools!  Now I’m in the sociology PhD program at  Northwestern University, focusing on geospatial computational criminology.  My time at CSDS was a vital part of my journey—I wouldn’t be where I am today without Luc, Julia, Marynia, and the rest of the team."

Luisa Eusse-Villa: "As a PhD visitor, my time at CSDS has been a remarkable experience, filled with collaborative moments and cherished memories. Working closely with Luc, Julia, Pedro, and the entire team has been an invaluable opportunity, as their insights and expertise have profoundly influenced my scientific research. I am sincerely grateful to everyone who made this experience at CSDS possible. From the warm welcome to the engaging BBQs, tea times, and one-on-one discussions, you all have made of CSDS an environment for not only academic growth but also a sense of belonging."

As a transplant from physics to public policy, Jamie Saxon found at CSDS a dynamic, technical community supportive of his work on gerrymandering, access to primary healthcare, and neighborhood dynamics.  He is now working as a Senior Software Engineer at Mapbox.

Yoon Hong Park: "The CSDS, particularly Dr. Marynia Kolak and Dr. Julia Koschinsky, provided me with a great opportunity to participate in interesting research projects from which I learned how spatial analysis is applied to real-life policy issues. Based on the experience at the CSDS, I am extending my knowledge about health disparities with regards to social determinants of health and start to think about how to improve the health status of residents in the underserved communities through research."

Angela Li fell in love with everything spatial in R after she won a College Research Fellowship through the Center. She founded R-Ladies Chicago, was working at CSDS as the R Spatial Advocate to make the spatial ecosystem in R accessible to the world, and is now a PhD student in sociology at Princeton.

Isaac Kamber liked Luc Anselin’s and Marynia Kolak’s spatial courses so much that he decided to major in Geographical Sciences. He won the Curriculum Innovation Award Fellowship through CSDS, started programming and is currently wrangling NASA images to model air quality at CSDS. In 2023, he was working as a Senior Associate for Data Science in DC.

Visiting from Switzerland, Anais Ladoy's Masters research on air quality modeling fit our research so well that she made major contributions to this research. While visiting, she was biking around Hyde Park with an air quality sensor around her neck to test the reliability of these wearables. In 2023, she was a PhD student in spatial epidemiology.

Richárd Farkas: "CSDS opened up the word of spatial thinking for me. The Center and its members gave me a new methodological structure for investigating research questions. My visit there was one of the most impressive experiences of my life."

Larissa Vieira did qualitative geography research as an undergrad. Then she discovered the possibilities of spatial computational research at CSDS and in Luc Anselin’s spatial data science course and combined these old and new skills at CSDS in a research project with the Chicago Department of Public Health. She now works as an editor in documentary filmmaking in Canada.

Chen Zeng: "Joining CSDS to continue my postdoc research is a fantastic experience as I could integrate what I learned in Prof. Anselin's spatial study group and R study group into my own research on urban studies and regional governance as well as my teaching. It is great to have discussions with scholars with interdisciplinary background. CSDS has a vibrant and informative team and I am honored to be part of it."

Johannes Moser: "Visiting the CSDS for 5 months was truly inspirational in many regards: amazing interdisciplinary colleagues foster creative thinking and connect you globally, lots of flexible and adapting research groups help you stimulate your methodical understanding of current research strands. The connection to other research institutes in the same house such as Knowledge Lab and Mansueto yields access to many high-profile researchers and interesting topics in similar areas. I learned so much at CSDS to improve my academic abilities that will guide me in my PhD dissertation. Finally, most importantly, I made great friends!"

Niall Newsham: "I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have visited the CSDS during my PhD. Though far too brief, my visit encouraged me to embrace spatial thinking within my research and inspired me to become a better researcher. Having the opportunity to engage with the vibrant and supportive community at the CSDS was a formative experience, and a real highlight of my academic journey to date."

Rosa Danenberg: “As a visiting PhD scholar from the urbanism discipline, I was warmly welcomed by a community of intellectual and friendly scholars who generously shared their spatial insights during the breakfast sessions and lectures, as well as in more informal settings that helped with advancing my work on spatiality within urbanism.”

Visiting from the University of Hongkong, Lulu Zhou added the spatial hedonic modeling skills she needed to complete her dissertation. On the side, she cleared 250 GeoDa software tickets.

Visiting from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Coro Chasco worked with Luc Anselin on her spatial flow research. While in Hyde Park, she translated all menu items in GeoDa into Spanish, so now Spanish (and Chinese) speakers can work natively.

Sam Joyce: "As an environmental studies major, my work with CSDS has taught me to see the spatial aspect of the environmental problems I study." In 2023, he worked as a Law Clerk in Alaska's Surpreme Court.

Gabe Morrison: "Being an RA with CSDS dramatically improved my data cleaning, analysis, and visualization skills (go Tidyverse and tmap!) and my ability to synthesize scholarly research. These skills have been crucial while working as an intern at Brookings’s Metropolitan Policy Program." In 2023, Gabe worked as a data scientist at the Urban Institute.

Erin Abbot was able to apply the skills she gained scripting in R on two projects related to her interest in researching the environmental effects on human health. She plans on applying these skills to her work at the Center for Graphic Analysis at Harvard.

 Andrea Domiter: "GIScience classes I have found useful, including intro to location analysis and intro to GIS and Spatial Analysis. Both of these classes have been incredibly useful in the context of my spatial data science internship with Origin Investments."  In 2023, Andreas was a Data Analyst at Starbucks and pursuing a Masters of Information and Data Science at UC Berkeley.

Susan Paykin: "In the spring I presented at the virtual SatRDay Chicago conference, highlighting my final project from GIS III where I used geocomputation in R to map local food systems and created a Shiny app to visualize the findings. Since graduating, I've been working with non-profit think tank Croatan Institute on researching opportunities and financing solutions for regenerative and organic farming in the U.S. I use ArcGIS and other spatial analysis tools to complement our research. " In 2023, Susan was Program Lead at the Open Spatial Lab & Associate Director, Community-Centered Data Science, at UChicago's Data Science Institute.

Ricardo Barros Louranco has applied his learnings from being a part of the GIS and CSDS community during his time at the University of Chicago on his work with non-traditional data sources for banking, such as scientific datasets from socio-economical studies in GIS format, Remote Sensing, and Climate and Weather models. “[He has] started to mentor a group of students at Project X and shape their proposals for modeling Climate Change most diverse interactions. [He is] quite happy because some of them may be going into spatial analysis, and then I assume we will be using GeoDa, PySal, & knowledge gained on classes taught by Luc Anselin.” In 2023, he was completing his PhD in geoscience at McMaster University (Canada).

Sihan Mao: "I took the GIS sequence in my second year and it was one of the best courses I had in UChicago. I was able to identify spatiotemporal clusters of city service calls, plot an air quality map from satellite images, and study amenities accessibility using spatial access score model from CSDS for affordable housing programs. This amazing experience got me my first job in the City of Pittsburgh as senior data analyst where I can improve city services with spatial analysis and provide visualization applications to city staff and residents." In 2023, he was a PhD student in Urban Planning & Development at USC.